Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SUITE TO APPLENESS: 2, by JAMES HARRISON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUITE TO APPLENESS: 2, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the quonset shed unloading the fertilizer
Last Line: Losing shape, into a thick green slime and jelly.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Apples; Farm Life; Fruit; Labor & Laborers; Agriculture; Farmers; Work; Workers


In the Quonset shed unloading the fertilizer,
each bag weighing eighty pounds,
muscles ache, lungs choke with heat and nitrogen;
then climbing the ladder of the water tank
to see in the orchard the brightness of apples,
sinking clothed into the icy water, feet thunking
iron bottom, a circle of hot yellow light above.

̺ ̺ ̺

The old tree, a McIntosh:
sixty-eight bushel last year,
with seventy-three bushel the year before that,
sitting up within it on a smooth branch,
avoiding the hoe, invisible to the ground,
buoyed up by apples, brain still shocked,
warped, shaved into curls of paper,
a wasps' globe of gray paper -
lamina of oil and clouds -
now drawing in greenness, the apples
swelling to heaviness on a hot August afternoon;
to sing, singing, voice cracks at second sing,
paper throat, brain unmoist for singing.

̺ ̺ ̺

Cranking the pump to loud life,
the wheel three turns to the left,
six hundred feet of pipe lying in the field;
the ground beneath begins shaking, bumping
with the force of coming water, sprinklers whirl,
the ground darkening with spray of flung water.

̺ ̺ ̺

After the harvest of cabbage the cabbage roots,
an acre of them and the discarded outer leaves,
scaly pale green roots against black soil,
to be forked into piles with the tomato vines;
a warm week later throwing them onto the wagon,
inside the piles the vines and leaves have rotted,
losing shape, into a thick green slime and jelly.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net